Programming @programming.dev egeres @lemmy.world 3d ago

Question: How to curl the lemmy API?

I've seen these posts

But actually I haven't been able to figure out exactly how to get the posts a user has made in lemmy. I've seen this page but I think this is for a different lemmy instance, I'm not sure https://join-lemmy.org/api/interfaces/GetPosts.html

Can anyone point me to a documentation on how to make this?

18 comments

curl 'https://lemmy.world/api/v3/user?username=egeres&sort=New&page=1&limit=20' | jq .posts

https://join-lemmy.org/api/classes/LemmyHttp.html#getPersonDetails

The documentation is really terrible and the developers try to defend it anyways.

Some instances also employ cloudflare or other anti-ddos techniques that make automated API usage impossible.
- Unofficial documentation using OpenAPI is here @egeres@lemmy.world .
  
  Btw, the user interface uses the same API. Just open the web developer tools in your browser and look at the network tab.
  
  Anti Commercial-AI license
  
  This is still written from a javascript perspective and assumes many things that are not true when using other approaches to calling the endpoints.
- Thank you so much!!!
I've found this more understandable.

I've also hacked together a quick thing for spamwaves that were happening last year here.

The purpose of that script is to ban, but there're auth bits that might help you get a grasp on your task.
- Many thanks!! I'm just trying to make a silly script to plot how often I comment on lemmy over time :)
- +1 for lemmy.readme.io, it's much easier to read than a JS lib documentation.
  
  Looks like the best openapi front. I looked into using it, but it didn't seem free. Too bad this one is outdated. Lemmys API has changed quiet a bit since then.
You can see the URL and request body from LemmyHttp class method docs: https://join-lemmy.org/api/classes/LemmyHttp.html#getPosts
- I really do not like these docs and find it extremely confusing for anyone not using Javascript. For example that "form" parameter that's on almost everything, doesn't even exist and can't be used when you're using curl, but it doesn't tell you that.
  
  These docs are for latest Lemmy version so you may experience some mismatches with a legacy instance but I didn’t see something like that so far.
  
  TBH I find the docs very easy. It’s about JS documentation familiarity I guess.

18 comments